


How This Grace Thing Works

by Voidfish



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Forgiveness, Kinda, M/M, Slow Burn, ghost au, john doesn't die (completely), more tags to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-26 14:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13237692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voidfish/pseuds/Voidfish
Summary: John's given a second chance at haunting Merle.Merle gets a second chance at saving John.





	1. It's Not The Long Walk Home That Will Change This Heart

**Author's Note:**

> New long fic attempt! The schedule is unclear for this one, as well as the chapter count, so hold on with me for that.
> 
> Fic title and chapter title both from Roll Away Your Stone by Mumford and Sons

John wakes up slowly, sense by sense. 

First is sound. There’s the faint lapping of waves in the background, and John thinks he must be back at the beach. Back with Merle. Except he can’t hear Merle beside him. There is no breathing or laughing, no quiet observation. There is just the gentle roar of the waves. 

Smell comes next. It’s an odd sensation to lose, and a stranger one to regain. There’s the scent of the ocean, the salty air that makes it easier for him to breathe. There’s something comforting about the air that he can’t explain. He’s never been one for the sea, but he realizes there’s nowhere else he would rather be right now. Except maybe, just maybe, he wishes he wasn’t alone.

The return of taste tells John that something is wrong. Because there’s blood in his mouth, the metallic taste jarring him. And it’s finally then that John remembers he wasn’t supposed to wake up from whatever happened before. The details are hazy, but the thought revives him, sending electricity through the body that he shouldn’t have right now.

The next sensation to return is touch. He’s lying on the sand, he feels it cling to his suit, and he knows that it’s going to be hard to wipe all of it off. That’s not the most pressing issue, however. The numbness is slowly replaced by a growing sense of pain. 

And when he finally opens his eyes…

He’s lying in the sand, feet inches away from the receding tide. The sky is dark, but the sun is slowly rising, illuminating the water.

His clothes are torn, shredded beyond repair, he notices. A pity.

And, worst of all, there’s someone kneeling in front of him. And it’s not who he wishes it was.

Perhaps someone is the wrong word. The figure is clearly a person, but not in the traditional sense of the word. There’s no form that John can focus on, directly, more like a void that if you squint creates the outline of a person. This figure sees that he’s awake, and chuckles. It’s a sound of pity. If John were in any other situation, he would be offended. As it is, he thinks pity is a kindness right about now. Doesn’t mean he has to like it, though.

“This is unusual,” the voice rings out.

“Who are you?” John rasps. His voice, it turns out, is in as bad shape as his body is.

The figure laughs. “Well-apparently, I’m Jeffandrew. I guess that’s what you should call me. That’s what your friend decided on.”

John only has one friend. “You’ve met Merle?” Jeffandrew nods. There’s a second of relief-and then fear. “So he’s-he’s dead.”

“Wa-no, no, he’s still alive. Alive and kicking,” Jeffandrew backpedals, barely visible hands shaking back and forth in the air.

John is relieved, yet even more confused. “Then am I? Dead, I mean?”

Jeffandrew tilts his head. “...kind of? It’s complicated. You’re not alive, but you’re not dead yet.”

John blinks. “What does that mean?”

Jeffandrew shrugs. “I’m not omnipotent, I really don’t know. I can only guess, same as you.”

John inhales, trying to steady himself. Slowly, he pries himself off the ground and into a sitting position, although it leaves him winded. It’s really not fair, if he’s not alive anymore, that he can still feel pain. He supposes this is what he deserves.

“Is it gone? The Hunger?” John holds his breath, waiting for an answer.

“Mostly.” Jeffandrew responds. “We don’t know how much, if any, is left. But if you’re still here, who’s to say.”

Despite the perfect weather at the beach John feels cold. It’s his fault that the Hunger began, and it’s his fault that it might not have ended. Where there once was pride for his creation there now was remorse. He used to think of the Hunger as his child, his saving creation. Now, he thinks bitterly, he views it as a virus.

“What do i do now?” John asks.

“That’s for you to find out,” Jeffandrew says. 

John frowns. “If you’re not going to help me, then why are you here?”

“To be honest, I’ve already met the people who saved the world. I was interested in meeting the man who almost doomed it.”

John nods. His voice is clear, for the first time, as he responds. “And?”

Jeffandrew chuckles. “I don’t think that’s who I’m talking to right now. Not anymore.”

And with that the figure disappears. The sun starts to climb in the sky.  
John lays back in the sand, reviewing the situation as he feels himself slowly being led somewhere new.

“Huh.” The sun climbs, lighting the once dark beach. It feels like a beginning.

And the next thing John knows, the beach is gone.


	2. I Tried To Unheave The Ties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merle mourns in quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I think how this is gonna work is short chapters daily/every other day.
> 
> Chapter title from A Sadness Runs Through Him.
> 
> All the songs are from my John playlist: https://8tracks.com/alexthepal/ascension
> 
> The next chapter is the last one of exposition i think and then we get to the action.

Merle Highchurch has an awful lot to be thankful for, he knows that. He’s grateful for his family and for his friends. He’s grateful to be on Pan’s good side. Hell, he’s thankful to be alive. After day of Story and Song is done, it’s easy to dwell on the negative. Merle likes to think he’s never been one for dwelling, never one to drown in his sorrow. Why cry when you could dance, after all?

But there are still things to grieve, after the Hunger is killed. There’s this new tense thing with Lucretia, the way their newly discovered family almost crumbles under the weight of her decision. There’s the cracks in each of his friends, his family, that have come from not only a difficult century but the hardest decade they had to face. There’s the stress, the pain, of what to do after your century long journey has ended. There’s the fear that he’s going to mess up the good that he has, going to continue to hurt the people he loves the most. 

And then there’s John.

Merle decides to keep his last conversation with John to himself this time. Because the others wouldn’t understand his grief. They saw John as their antagonist (and understandably so). They ran from him, they feared him in private, but they also hated him. Their mission had evolved beyond exploring the planes-they were going to save the planes. And from what else then the Hunger? And who was the Hunger? He was John.

Merle sees things differently. 

John wasn’t the Hunger, John was a broken man grasping for meaning. John was an asshole, at times, sure, but his face in their last parley just clarified that John was more human than he pretended to be. And Merle knew the others couldn’t tell through story alone, through Merle’s recounting, but Merle knew he was so close to saving John. 

And, yet, in the end, he was too late. 

Merle tries to move on, tries to forget John. Hell, he’s an earl now, he has a large family who love him, this really shouldn’t be something that bothers him.

And yet, it does. Still, John keeps him up at night. What could have been. What almost was.

Is it bad to say that he misses him?

In the day he’s easy to forget-there’s a world to explore, a world to fix, a world that John is no longer a part of. A world that John never was a part of to begin with. 

At night it’s harder to pretend.

Merle knows it’s useless, but he still wonders about John. He still prays for him, that wherever he is he’s opened his eyes. Realized how beautiful the world is, realized how obnoxious he was. Realized he wasn’t alone anymore.

Realized that he had a friend in Merle.

Merle doesn’t have regrets-he doesn’t like to live that way. If you focus too much on the bad, on the past, it would consume you. From what he can understand, that’s what happened to John-he was consumed by his own nihilism.

Merle doesn’t regret but he does mourn.


	3. Do You Think You'll Get to Heaven Just by Simply Sneaking In?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John finds himself somewhere new. He doesn't find it funny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the song The Father Complex by Many Rooms

The beach is gone, unfortunately, when John comes to. He looks around this new place and he’s never missed the beach more.

John finds himself in a hideously painted room. The walls are a lime green, the carpet a forest green. Whoever designed this room, John thinks to himself, must like the color green a little too much.

The room looks like a master bedroom.

There’s a bed, messily made, against the wall. The covers are a dark blue with seashells, which doesn’t clash with the design of the rest of the room, but definetly doesn’t fit the theme.

The room looks lived in; there’s a mug filled with what might be booze on the bedside table, and cups strewn ‘round the room. The closet door is open just a crack, which is all you need to see to know that the rest of the closet is an absolute nightmare. The dressers are overflowing with clothes that weren’t folded right and because of this they can’t close. There are signs of life everywhere.

John vaguely remembers his own room. The walls were beige. It was neat, but it was cold, lifeless. He wonders what it would be like to live a life so messy and full that a stranger walking through your house could see it.

John goes to explore the adjacent bathroom.

The bathroom is just barely more organized-it needs a good cleaning, but at least there’s no clothes littered on the ground. There’s sticky notes on the edge of the mirror, reminding whoever to “pick the kids up at 4”. The writing is messy, almost as if they message was scrawled quickly. John doesn’t know what time it is, but he wonders if this person managed to remember to pick the kids up.

There are other notes, too, though. Stranger ones.

“We’re safe.”

“This is the last cycle.”

“There are some people that you just can’t save.”

John stumbles backwards. There’s something about these words that makes him pause, but it’s just out of reach.

_Safe from what? Who talks in cycles?_

_Who did this person lose?_

“Shit!” A voice rings out from the room. A familiar voice. A voice that John never thought he’d hear again.

John turns, just in time to see a small dwarven figure emerge from the covers. His beard is unkempt and gray, his hair messily shoved into a lopsided bun on the top of his head. There are wisps of hair by his ears that refuse to be contained.

His outfit is hideous, and yet it works-he sports a white tank top with a dark blue hawaiian shirt covered in flowers and battlewagons and green and yellow plaid shorts. He scratches his beard with a wooden arm as he rushes to the bathroom, past John, who stands in absolute horror.

_He’s in Merle’s house._

“Shit, I’m late to pick up the kids,” Merle mutters to himself as he checks the notes on the mirror.

“Merle?” John asks, voice soft and confused.

Merle grabs the appropriate note and shoves it into the pocket of his shorts.

“Merle,” John tries again, louder this time.

Merle rushes past him, walking through him.

Merle is nearly out of the room when John follows him.

He doesn’t really know how it happens, he’s just angry, and he wants Merle to stay.

“Merle!” John shouts, and the door slams shut inches from Merle’s face.

There’s a moment of pause as Merle, startled, looks around the room.

Always the peacemaker, Merle raises his hands in compromise. “I need to pick my kids up right now. Can we do the whole spooky thing afterwards?”

John, tentatively, tries to open the door. It manages to work.

Merle smiles. “Thanks, bud.” And then he’s gone.

John sits down, head pounding.

_Someone higher up clearly has a sense of humor,_ John thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of the exposition part of the story, the next bit should be John exploring his ghostly abilities and Merle trying to communicate with his "new friend".

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is @infernaltwink, come scream with me about John Hunger!


End file.
